{"id":56376,"date":"2018-05-10T19:15:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T19:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56376"},"modified":"2018-05-10T19:15:16","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T19:15:16","slug":"joseph-boyden-wont-find-indigenous-identity-in-a-test-tube-of-spit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56376","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Boyden Won\u2019t Find Indigenous Identity In A Test Tube Of Spit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Boyden Won\u2019t Find Indigenous Identity In A Test Tube Of Spit<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Canadaland<\/a>
\n2017-08-04<\/p>\n

Robert Jago<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nphoto by Bryan McBurney<\/small><\/p>\n

To be First Nations<\/a>, you must first belong to a nation.<\/em><\/p>\n

In anticipation of a fall book tour for his new novel, Seven Matches<\/em>, Joseph Boyden<\/a> is back in the pages of Maclean\u2019s<\/em> magazine with an article restating his claim of First Nations ancestry<\/a>, and anchoring that in the results of a DNA test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Boyden\u2019s ancestry first came into question late last year when I, along with APTN<\/a> and a number of other Indigenous activists, questioned Boyden\u2019s right to speak on our behalf<\/a>. We looked at his shifting claims of ancestry \u2014 covered here on CANADALAND<\/em><\/a> \u2014 and his misuse of basic First Nations<\/a> concepts like being \u201ctwo-spirit<\/a>,\u201d and we presented the questions<\/a> to the public for them to decide.<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking \u2014 though with many notable exceptions \u2014 Indigenous people on social media took the position that he was not Indigenous. And broadly speaking, non-Natives, especially those in the media, claimed that he was, and that we had no right as Indigenous people to determine who belonged to our communities…<\/p>\n

In his 4,000-word Maclean\u2019s<\/em> piece, \u201cMy name is Joseph Boyden<\/a>,\u201d Boyden presents several cases for his First Nations bona fides. The article is presented as being addressed to Indigenous critics \u2014 but the enthusiastic support of a dwindling number of media figures, like \u201cAppropriation Prize\u201d ring-leader Ken Whyte<\/a>, perhaps reveals the real intended audience: white Canadians looking for an excuse to turn the page on this controversy and take Boyden back as the leading voice of Indigenous Canada<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be First Nations, you must first belong to a nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,8,3015],"tags":[20008,16792,28622],"class_list":["post-56376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","tag-canadaland","tag-joseph-boyden","tag-robert-jago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56377,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56376\/revisions\/56377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}